PUBG Mobile is now available on iOS and Android in the US for free

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Other regions will be announced at a later date.

Above: our video preview of PUBG Mobile running on a Google Pixel.

The battle royale infection has spread to mobile platforms much more quickly than we could ever have expected. Within a week, Fortnite's mobile version skyrocketed to the top of the iOS app store, nabbing nearly $1.5 million in the process. And PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is now officially in the race. After a soft-launch in Canada earlier this week, the free-to-play mobile port is now available on iOS and Android app stores in the US.

If you're curious about trying it out (and, honestly, why wouldn't you be?), you can watch the video above to see my impressions after playing for an afternoon on my Google Pixel. It's a surprisingly faithful port that doesn't sacrifice any of the central pillars of PUBG's combat—it's still 100 players, still has a giant blue circle that pushes everyone inward, and it's still intense as hell.

That said, playing a shooter on a phone is never a perfect experience. The controls are going to be the biggest obstacle, even though PUBG Mobile does some really smart things with its user interface to make it work better on a phone. But no matter how easy managing your inventory now is, aiming is still a real pain in the ass.

If you're on iOS, you can head over to the app store to download it and give it a whirl. Android users can find it on Google's Play Store. It's free and relatively small (well under a gigabyte in size), so it's a great way to kill an afternoon.

If you've already given it a try, let us know what you think.

Steven Messner
Steven Messner

With over 7 years of experience with in-depth feature reporting, Steven's mission is to chronicle the fascinating ways that games intersect our lives. Whether it's colossal in-game wars in an MMO, or long-haul truckers who turn to games to protect them from the loneliness of the open road, Steven tries to unearth PC gaming's greatest untold stories. His love of PC gaming started extremely early. Without money to spend, he spent an entire day watching the progress bar on a 25mb download of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 demo that he then played for at least a hundred hours. It was a good demo.